


Agents of Shadow

by Tyranidlord



Series: The Dragonblood King [1]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Forgotten Realms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Elder Scrolls Lore, F/M, Falmer (Elder Scrolls), Gen, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:42:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23819407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyranidlord/pseuds/Tyranidlord
Summary: Kaius Desin sits on the Throne of Skyrim as High King, but these are troubled times. Alduin may be dead; slain by Kaius in Sovngard but now the true war has begun.The Drow city states have begun their underground invasion of Blackreach to exterminate the Falmer, but faced with destruction the blind hordes are now flooding to the surface. Kaius will need to forge Skyrim's unity in the midst of a full blown invasion from the underground but far to the south of Skyrim and the Empire, the Aldmeri Dominion is watching the unfolding events with keen interest...Chapter 1 Posted - 24 Apr 20
Series: The Dragonblood King [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1716238
Comments: 5
Kudos: 17





	Agents of Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first chapter of my planned trilogy to finish off Kaius' story but I will not be updating it until I get much further through "Champion" in my "Bloodtide Rising" series. I have the entire plot arc for this story, and the following two and while I don't think that they will be as large as "Deserter", "Knight" and "Champion" I started "Sos do Dov" with the original intention to only completed "Bloodtide Receded" so we'll have to see how we go... 
> 
> To really set the scene, in among my searching for music to write to I found what I consider to be the song what I would have as the intro if my fics got turned into a netflix series (in an alternate universe maybe...) 
> 
> The Sovngarde Song, 2016 by Miracleofsound. 
> 
> https://youtu.be/4ByfT-bEImg
> 
> As a last point, the tags for this story are massively incomplete as I don't want to start throwing spoilers around like confetti... ha. 
> 
> Otherwise, consider this as a teaser for what is to come while I try to complete "Bloodtide Rising" and I hope you all enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title Translation: "Dragonslayer"

_JOOR!_

_ZAH!_

_FRUL!_

The pulses of raw energy swept through the dew soaked grass, caressing and sending shivers of gleaming droplets sparkling in the morning sun. Startled, flocks of birds took flight, their confusion chasing the echoes of power as they took to the skies and fled from the source. Game lifted their heads, eyes widening as their instincts took control and they followed the path of the winged creatures in their attempts to put as much distance between them and the cataclysmic battle that their home was suddenly host to.

From the endless cliffs that split the clouds with their height, to the rolling plains and forests, the _Thu’um_ touched everything with its might, pulverising the endless waterfalls into rainbow filled clouds of mist, shaking the pines and oaks to the roots and causing the land to shiver. Not a single being or piece of the endless landscape was untouched by the power, drawing the attention of all while at the same time filling their souls with the desire to flee.

_JOOR!_

_ZAH!_

_FRUL!_

Each word stuck the land like a giant’s smithing hammer, slamming with incomprehensible force until air, rock and soil shuddered and buckled under the onslaught. The power was almost unlike anything that had touched this land before, a literal power of creation and the song of reality itself made manifest by the souls of mortals.

The words were _dovahzul_ ; the ancient tongue of the beings from before time and yet were not words. They were meaning, intent and understanding, themes of comprehension spliced into reality that could change the world with nothing but will. Even here, in this place beyond the scope of mortal lives the words and meaning held sway over the laws of reality and Sovngarde felt the touch of the _Thu’um_.

_JOOR!_

_ZAH!_

_FRUL!_

The words were joined with others of their kind, spoken by a being whose species had given birth to such means of tonal architecture but they were struggling to have the same effect as those used against it. The intent and understanding of words from an alien consciousness crashed against the waves with their own emotion and fury until reality threatened to rip apart like shredded cloth. It was impossible not to feel the might of the creature that was the centre of the growing storm of unfathomable energies and the realm of the honoured dead was little more than an observer to a truly unique event.

Through time and space Alduin had been hunted, and even here within the Nordic afterlife he had failed to shake off his pursuer. It was here where he was at his strongest, having slaked his thirst for power by feasting upon the numerous souls of those who had died in combat but it was still not enough.

_JOOR!_

_ZAH!_

_FRUL!_

Each word of the Thu’um was intent and meaning, the understanding and power of reality. _Yol_ meant fire, but did not describe fire. It _was_ fire. It was the heat and ravenous hunger that was open flames and as such the words that were being hurled at the first born of Akatosh were not what they had been before. They were intent, meaning, understanding and concepts, weaponised against a being that was impervious to the crafts of men and mer alike.

But despite the concepts and meanings of _Joor Zah Frul_ being dovah in nature, these were not how the dovah understood them. They had been tainted, corrupted and twisted by design into something more than what they were. The concepts were changed, the meaning skewed and mutated into something foreign, alien and horrific to the immortal dov.

To the dov, _Joor_ had been mortals; the beings that had not been blessed with eternity like the dragons and doomed to live their minuscule lives on Nirn. They were like insects; tiny, short lived and fragile but now they were proving that they had stings. _Joor_ was now the true meaning of _mortal_ , from a mortal’s perspective. No longer did it mean the simple beings that the dragons had enslaved but mortality itself. The understanding of such a concept; of life, death, afterlife and the cycle it represented was incomprehensible to a being who was literally a fragment of creation and time. _Joor_ was now the fear of death, the joy of creating life, the sorrow of burying a child, of mourning a lost love. It was the pain of a body giving in to death and sickness, of suffering through existence only to lose it all at the end and of a life existing only as the merest flicker of flame in the long darkness of entity.

 _Zah_ ’s purest meaning was _finite_ but like _Joor_ it too had been corrupted by mortal will. _Zah_ spoke of limitations, of the finite nature in all things. The finite time that all living being existed whether they were alive or dead. It spoke of starvation and loss, of famine and desolation of life. There was coiling traces of greed and despair leeching into the word, the sensations of never having enough, the never-ending fight for survival of beings that were always one foot in the grave. Afterlife, even one such as Sovngarde with its unlimited fields of honey and game would never be enough for the countless war-dead and even if it was, existence never lasted forever.

Perhaps even more than the other two words _Frul_ had been twisted far beyond its original meaning. _Frul_ had once been used to describe the mortal races but was now being turned against the dov. Temporary, ephemeral, fleeting, short-lived and brief, the mortal races would never… _should_ never have posed a threat to the immortality of dragonkind but this very nature was being used as a weapon. _Frul_ now spoke of the mortal lives that had flared and vanished in the darkness. It spoke of the lives cut short and lost to the winds of Aetherius by plague, war, disease and famine. Like a Luna moth that unfurled its wings during sunset only to die without seeing a single dawn all things came to an end and no matter whether it was life or reality itself, only the dov were immune. Alduin represented but one of many ends of reality itself, consuming the world to allow the wheel of time to turn another temporary existence but now the full weight of what that meant and represented to those living such an existence crashed hard into the great wyrm’s consciousness.

**_JOOR!_ **

**_ZAH!_ **

**_FRUL!_ **

The land heaved again once more, the pulsing waves of meaning ripping through everything within range with its deadly force. Grass blackened and died from the intensity of the hate and understanding that had been fused into the _shout_ , trees crumbled into rotting dust and those few animals and insects that had not yet managed to flee to a safe distance were cast down as broken husks. In those few moments the full meaning of _Mortal, Finite, Temporary_ infused itself into Sovngarde’s eternal, spiritual nature and corrupted it within range of the pulsating might of _Dragonrend_.

In the very heart of the maelstrom, within the crescendo of energies the target of _Dragonrend_ finally succumbed to the combination of the Thu’um and mortal crafts. The blood of the greatest dragon of them all, the first born of Akatosh stained the _Thu’um_ scoured soil and the shriek of untold agonies whipped the dust into a frenzy as Alduin’s life was ripped from his physical form. Shuddering and writhing, the giant dragon roared as its adversary jammed the elvish sword to the hilt into, and through scale and bone and brain, the physical attack finally finding a chink in Alduin’s _Thu’um_ weakened form.

The dying breath of the world-eater exploded out with the force of dying realities in a wave of power unlike even the greatest of _Thu’um’s_. Far above them the clouds were blasted into nothingness from the pulse of raw power, revealing the infinite skies and the mountainous cliffs that continued on for eternity and a dust storm greater than any on Nirn stripped the land bare.

This time the shudder that rolled though the land was not one of reality-breaking energies but that of the lord of dragons slamming down hard in death. Gore flooded out of the wound in its skull and the numerous others that had been inflicted by its adversaries and with a last, shuddering gasp the last of its life flooding out in a breath of misted blood.

Exhausted, battered and bleeding, Kaius wrenched back hard on his Ayleid blade _Skysong_ , twisting it free from the scaled flesh and promptly falling backwards. It had taken all of his considerable strength, his full vampiric abilities and almost his entire life to succeed but he had done it. Alduin was finally defeated and he struggled to rise as the wyrm’s body settled in death.

There was no doubting the majesty in Akatosh’s firstborn, the midnight scales and the sheer size was overwhelming even compared to the rest of his kind. Alduin was larger, stronger, and more deadly than any of the lesser Dov, but he was now dead and Kaius was still alive, albeit wounded and so… so _tired._ Despite all this he was once again victorious.

Even as he struggled to rise he could see the body barely even an arm’s span away, the sleek, oil like scales beginning to shimmer and twist like heat rising from desert sands. The blood was shifting and changing, boiling away as the flesh and remains began to follow suit. Slowly, like a dam breaking under the strain of a flooded river’s might the body began to pulse and dissolve, scales sloughing away like boiling tar, muscles and ligaments splitting and burning away from the ebony skeleton.

Despite the rending of flesh and scales there was no storm of lights that erupted from the battered corpse, no roaring soul-energies that were absorbed into his being and Kaius watched as the body of his foe was shredded by reality’s pull. It didn’t take long before the skeleton had been picked free by the elemental forces, but soon that too rippled and faded and disintegrated into nothingness until all that was left was the scar on the afterlife from the battle.

“He’s dead.” Exclaimed one of Kaius’ comrades as he staggered upright. “It’s done.”

“Alduin is defeated.” Added another and the crunch of _Thu’um_ blasted soil echoed loudly in the post-battle silence as they moved closer. “It truly is over.”

“His soul.” Kaius rasped, spitting out a mouthful of blood and a loosened tooth into the grave-like soil. Whether the tooth had been loosened as a result of the time when Alduin had stuck a glancing blow with his tail or from the horrendous power of the _Dragonrend_ shout he didn’t know but his mind was filled with concern for other matters. “I didn’t absorb his soul.”

A hand clad in a thick mail mitten hovered in front of his face and he grasped it, allowing his comrade to help him to his feet.

“None of us expected you to.” Said the warrior, his face beaming with the joy of victory over an enemy that had been both Kaius’ and his own. “Alduin was a dragon and yet not a dragon. He is defeated but there is no way for you, or anything else to become whole with such a being.”

His grin was a mouthful of pick-stained teeth but Kaius grasped the long-dead Nord on the shoulder and painfully rose to his full height. Hakon One-Eye and his fellow tongues had aided Kaius in the battle, and it had proved that the joining of such masters of the Thu’um had been enough to match Alduin’s abilities.

Even compared to Kaius’ achievements, the three long-dead Nordic heroes were incomparable legends. Hakon, Gormlaith Golden-Hilt and Felldir the Old had been the first mortals that Paarthurnax had taught the _Thu’um_ , had faced Alduin thousands of years before and had been the individuals responsible for casting him forward in time to save the world. They had not been enough to defeat him in the Merethic Era but they had been instrumental in assisting Kaius and they surrounded him with triumphant expressions.

“So it is truly over?”

All three nodded, their own smiles and injuries visible but unlike Kaius’ theirs’ were healing quickly. Such was the nature of the honoured-dead within Sovngarde, and even something like being bitten in half for a second time in Gormlauth’s case hadn’t been able to stop the likes of them.

The Nordic shield maiden smiled with the latest wound from hip to shoulder sealing before Kaius’ eyes, nodding off in the distance to the impossibly sized mead hall that dominated the horizon. “You better brace yourself.”

“What? Why?” Kaius’ exhaustion was almost complete and it took the sound of someone running towards him to finally register her words and begin to turn.

“Kaius! You son of a bitch! You did it! You killed Alduin!”

It was less of a bear hug and more of a flying tackle as the individual wrapped his arms around the wounded champion and lifted him off his feet. The three master tongues had stepped away with amusement plastered over their faces at the sight of the badly battered Kaius getting picked up by another long-dead Nord, especially after he grunted in pain as he received a congratulatory slap on the shoulders.

“I am hurting a little you know.” He said as the Nord finally put him back down.

“When are you not?” There was no removing the all-too-familiar cheerful expression off Tyr’s face as he grasped Kaius firmly by the shoulder and looked over the way that his armour looked like scrap metal. “The big lizard definitely did a number on you didn’t he.”

“He came close a few times.” Kaius admitted. Grasping the hand of one of his closest friends and finally breaking out into a smile.

Tyr was not the only fallen soul who was moving towards them. The Hall of Valour, home to the honoured dead was emptying in the wake of the battle and the numbers were almost beyond counting. Tyr, and a handful of others had been the first to rush towards Kaius, seeking out the man that they had known in life and Kaius couldn’t help but smile at the familiar faces.

“But you did it! You won! The tales that are going to be told, the songs that will be sung! And the mead! Gods above this is going to be some party!” Wrapping an arm around Kaius’ shoulders he nodded in the direction of the thousands approaching with a conspiratorial gleam in his eye. “Not to mention the women either…”

Of all the figures in souls of those who had died in battle there was one that did not belong in their number and it was this being that Kaius’ remaining eye rested upon as he approached. The man was a true giant of an individual, towering over twice the height of all of those within Sovngarde and wearing nothing more than animal furs covering his legs and waist. The sheer power of the being was more than enough to show his godly nature, let alone the aura of intensity that washed over them as he approached.

“I can’t stay, Tyr.” A truthful sadness infused every word but Kaius spoke them aloud without hesistation. “I don’t belong here.”

True sadness broke through the Nordic blades expression, a sadness that mirrored the one that he had worn during his death at the hands of the Dremora Reive those years before. “What? Of course you belong here. You just killed the World-Eater!”

“It was a mighty deed!” Rumbled the giant as he approached the small group as the departed souls began surrounding the battle site. “They will sing of this battle in Shor’s hall forever but Kaius is right. His fate lies elsewhere.”

“Where? In Coldharbour with Molag Bal?” Spat Tyr forcibly. He and many of the others were looking at Tsun, Shield-thane of the god Shor and he certainly wasn’t alone with looking ready to stand between him and Kaius if it came to it.

“If you think that bastard is going to have my soul if Alduin couldn’t claim it, then you are even more thick-headed dead than alive.” A mouthful of blood coughed its way out of Kaius’ mouth as he patted Tyr on the back. “I’ll be fine.”

Despite the triumph of the task there was a growing darkness surrounding Kaius and it was impossible not to feel the deepening mood. Even after such an event and his vampirism, Kaius was not technically dead and only those who died in battle would find themselves in Sovngarde. He knew it, Tyr knew it and all of the others knew it and there weren’t many who were happy about the fact.

“I almost pity the Rape-Prince when you finally complete your count of days.” Tsun stated, his voice thunderous with its intensity. “If it comes to pass, I and the dead of Sovngarde may welcome you again and bid you join the blessed feasting.”

Struggling to hold back his own emotions, Tyr gritted his teeth, glanced at Kaius with a hint of his characteristic nature and gave a smile. “Guess this is it then. Again.”

“It was good to see you again, even if it was for a brief time.” Both of them gripped their arms together tightly, smiling grimly even as Tyr’s expression again turned into one of amusement.

“All hail the Dragonborn!” He bellowed just as Kaius realised what he was about to do. “Hail him with great praise!”

The answering cry from the uncountable battle-dead could have drowned out even the mightiest of _Thu’um_ , rocking the afterlife to the very core. Struggling to hold his own emotions in check, Tyr nodded once, seeing the emotion reflected in his friend’s remaining eye and forcing a smile on his face.

“You better look after yourself on Nirn.”

“Don’t I always?”

Moving slightly away, Kaius grinned at Tyr and saw a sea of familiar, smiling faces of men and women who had known through his life. Legionaries, Blades, comrades in arms and friends were present and were now witnesses to one of his greatest victories. The pain he as feeling had nothing to do with the injuries that Alduin had inflicted. It was the agony of loss and loneliness, of the knowledge that for the second time he was bidding farewell to many who he had and still called friend. Quite likely for the final and last time.

The first of the Tongues were close by, close enough to show that they had taken part but they had not been responsible for Alduin’s ultimate defeat. They knew this and accepted this, but now they could be of assistance once again.

“If you ever need help, you know where to find it.” Felldir said as he and his fellow tongues moved around Kaius until he was in the centre of them. “It has been an honour fighting by your side.”

“I might just take you up on that offer.” There was a rumbled laugh from the assembled crowds but Kaius’ expression was as sombre as his tone.

Nodding to each other, the three Nordic tongues prepared themselves, controlling their breathing and preparing themselves to use the Thu’um once more. Standing in the heart of their formation, and surrounded by the countless honoured dead Kaius relaxed, feeling the warring emotions of victorious elation and crushing loneliness within him as he prepared for what was to come next.

**_“Diil!”_ **

**_“Daal!”_ **

**_“VUS!”_ **


End file.
